“Ren, this is Mr. Whitmore. He needs company tonight.”
Ren shook his head. His father sighed as if the gesture were tedious, as if the refusal were a teenage whim not worth paying attention to.
“I’m not asking for your opinion.”
Mr. Whitmore was looking at him. Not at his face. Lower down. Ren was wearing his pajama top and a pair of cotton pants that were too short for him because he’d had a growth spurt that summer and no one had bothered to buy him new clothes.
“He’s small for his age.” Whitmore’s voice was thick, pasty.
“He’s an omega. They’re like that.”
Ren took a step back. The doorframe hit his shoulder blade. His father looked up, and in his eyes there was no cruelty, no sadism, nothing. Just numbers. Just the figure Whitmore had promised him, which would pay off that week’s gambling debts.
“Ren,” the warning tone. The syllable sharp as a lash.
Whitmore stepped closer. His hand grabbed Ren’s wrist. The fingers were thick and calloused. They squeezed too hard. Ren pulled his arm away. It didn’t work. It never worked. The acrid scent of the alpha enveloped him, and his stomach churned. He opened his mouth to scream, but Whitmore’s other hand covered his lips and nose, and he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t…
He woke up screaming.
The sound tore through the darkness of the room like something alive, something with claws. Ren sat up in bed, his chest heaving, the sheets twisted around his legs like a trap. His T-shirt clung to his torso, soaked in sweat. It took three heartbeats to remember where he was. Not at home. Not in his father’s studio. At Brody’s mansion. In the guest room. Safe.
Safe.
The word tasted like a lie in his mouth.
The door burst open. Brody filled the entire doorway with his body: barefoot, in gray sweatpants and a crumpled black T-shirt, his hair falling over his forehead. His gray eyes, rimmed withred, swept the room, searching for the threat, the intruder, the danger. They found nothing.
Only Ren. Sitting in the middle of the bed with his fists clenched on the sheets and his breathing ragged.
Brody didn’t touch him.
He stood in the doorway with his arms at his sides and his hands open, as if to show he wasn’t carrying anything in them.
And then Ren felt it: the warm, thick wave of his pheromones, the scent of raisins and walnuts spreading through the room like a blanket someone unfolds over a trembling body. It enveloped his chest. It loosened his fists. It slowed his heart by a beat, two, three. The relief was instant and involuntary. Ren hated it with every fiber of his being.
“Stop.”
Brody looked at him, bewildered.
“Stop doing that.” Ren wiped his face with the back of his hand. His cheeks were burning. “I don’t need you to manipulate me into calming down like I’m an animal.”
Something flashed across Brody’s face. A brief spasm in his jaw, a blink that lasted too long. He cut off the pheromones. Just like that, as if turning off a faucet. The void that gesture left behind was worse than the nightmare. Ren felt the cold seep into the space the scent had occupied, a cold that reminded him of Whitmore’s hand, of the hallway in his house, of the dull yellow wallpaper.
Brody nodded once. He took half a step back.
“Okay.”
He was going to leave. Ren saw it in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the way his right foot had already turned towardthe hallway. He was going to close the door and leave him alone in that dark room with the echo of the scream still vibrating off the walls.
“Brody.”
The voice that came out of his throat didn’t belong to him. It was small. Fragile. The voice of the sixteen-year-old boy who hadn’t been able to scream when the hand covered his mouth. Brody stopped.
“Stay.”
The word hung suspended between them. Ren didn’t embellish it. He didn’t justify it. He added nothing because he had no energy left to construct excuses. Just that. Stay. That bare, pathetic word.
Brody didn’t approach the bed. He crossed the room in silence, walked around the mattress, and sat down in the armchair by the window. The frame creaked under his weight. He rested his elbows on the armrests, folded his hands over his stomach, and tilted his head back until the nape of his neck touched the backrest.
